80 Influence courses in Leicester

Successfully closing a sale and negotiating the best outcome for the business is a key skill for all salespeople, and often an area that is overlooked. Investing in this skill will have a positive impact on interactions with customers, both new and existing, and lead to improved sales performance. Whilst understanding how to reach a conclusion with a customer faster means increased efficiency and more time to invest in sourcing new business. We have developed this programme to be practical, fun and interactive. Participants will learn proven techniques for influencing, persuading and negotiating with clients, gain increased confidence and clarity when reviewing contract terms and prices, and understand how to structure and manage sales negotiation and contract review meetings. This course will help participants: * Learn a structured and proven approach to the negotiation of contract terms * Apply the key principles of negotiation, playing the person and the problem * Create a contract negotiation strategy - from opening to close * Recognize and put to use proven negotiation tactics and techniques * Learn how to embrace conflict positively - to 'say no, then negotiate' * Plan and prepare for any commercial negotiation conversations * Understand the stages of negotiation and how to move through them 1 CLOSING AND NEGOTIATING FROM A POSITION OF PERSONAL POWER * The eight steps of a sales or commercial negotiation * Ten ways to resist price pressure * How to draw on sources of power when you have less authority * The six principles of influence and persuasion and how to use them 2 EFFECTIVE NEGOTIATION - PLANNING AND THEORY * How to plan and structure your negotiation for a successful and quick conclusion * Influence: knowing how to 'push or pull' to win an argument * Achieving a BATNA - a range of practical skills and techniques * Case study: planning for a client negotiation around contract or price issues 3 EFFECTIVE CLOSING AND NEGOTIATION - PRACTICE AND REALITY * Higher-level questioning techniques to investigate and solve problems * Listening to lead - active listening and structuring your conversation * The most common 'unforced' negotiation mistakes and errors * Case study: setting objectives, sources of value, trading concessions 4 SALES NEGOTIATION TACTICS AND PLAYING THE GAME * How high - how hard - how soon; why now * How to identify hidden or perceived currencies and values * How to use these to establish a higher base price * Negotiation best-practice checklist and summary

Maximising the relationship and sales potential of each active account is key to the sustainability of any business relying on repeatable custom. In this workshop we start by looking at key techniques for analysing the profitability and development opportunities for different clients before deciding upon the strategy and skills needed for moving the relationship to that of trusted adviser and partner. By understanding and creating the need we can use our influencing skills to harness any sales development potential. By creating the habit of explaining our ideas in a way that also meets the need of the other party we help everybody make the right decisions for them. This course will help participants: * Assess the sales profitability and potential of existing key accounts * Prioritise where time and energy is directed for maximum profitability * Understand the key players in the decision making unit * Create a strategic plan for the development of each client target * Develop proactive sales consultancy skills * Learn advanced communication and influencing techniques 1 WHAT MAKES AN EFFECTIVE ACCOUNT MANAGER? * The difference between order taking and account management * How do you define a key account in your business? * Why should existing customers remain with your company? * How do you compare to the competition? 2 HOW DO I PRIORITISE MY ACCOUNT MANAGEMENT ACTIVITY? * Use practical tools to help you assess revenue potential * Analyse the investment required versus the return on your time * Create a SWOT analysis on your clients - Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities & Threats * Appreciate how this knowledge will improve your sales development 3 PLANNING STRATEGIES FOR EACH ACCOUNT * Create a list of priority accounts and activities * Learn how to develop a long-term and sustainable relationship * Discover how they make their purchasing decisions * Research the make-up of the Decision Making Unit for each client 4 LEARNING AND UTILISING THE SIX PRINCIPLES OF INFLUENCE * Learn the secrets these principles offer sales people * Discover how these principles will work for you * Create an influencing strategy for influencers within the client * Learn new habits of influence 5 PROACTIVE SALES SKILLS * Plan proactive sales meetings for key accounts * Set primary and secondary objectives for every touch point with the customer * Structure sales meetings for maximum effectiveness * Help the customer commit and achieve their objectives 6 PUTTING IT INTO PRACTICE * Discuss real scenarios to plan for putting these skills into practice * Share common issues with fellow sales people * Create a personal development plan

Conflict is a word that conjures up many emotions. It is something that most people would prefer to avoid, if possible. Work can be an emotive place. Positive relationships can make your life at work exciting, motivating and challenging, whilst relationships that do not hold value to you could make your life very difficult and stressful, especially if there is conflict between you and your manager. This course is essential for people who want to understand where conflict can be used to positive effect and how to manage conflict in your working relationships and see it as something positive that can stimulate the environment. Research has shown that relationships at work are an extremely high motivational factor, and for a lot of people it has a higher importance that salary! Therefore, it is essential that we invest in relationships and search out new ways to make them better in order to have a more positive influence on our surroundings. By understanding why other people are in conflict we can manage the conversation a lot better, with outcomes managed more effectively so the 'conflict' will add value to the organisation. This participative event will cover a wide variety of exercises and personal stories, and leave course participants with a clear strategy to identify when they are in conflict with someone and how they will structure their approach to get to a satisfactory outcome. This is a workshop that targets anyone where conflict needs to be managed and cannot seem to resolve it, whether internally or externally. At the end of the day, participants will: * Know their key relationships and the strength of those relationships * Complete the Strengths Deployment Inventory (SDI) to identify where you deploy your strengths * Understand what is important to you and your key stakeholders * Know how motivational value systems can influence behaviour * Tailor your communication style to match that of your opposite party * Know conflict strategies to resolve conflict in others * Learn to be more assertive when challenging * Achieve key personal, departmental and organisational objectives 1 WHERE ARE YOU NOW? * How effective are your current working relationships? * Can I work effectively without the input from others? * Who do you need to be a success? 2 THE STRENGTHS DEPLOYMENT INVENTORY (SDI) * Completion of the SDI questionnaire * An understanding of the theory * A 'trip around the triangle' * Predicting relationship interaction * Your scores and what they mean in your relationships 3 CONFLICT THEORY * What is conflict? * The 3 flags of conflict * What are your conflict triggers? * Your conflict scores plotted * The conflict sequence 4 CONFLICT RESOLUTION STRATEGIES * Early warning signs * Most productive behaviours * Least productive behaviours * Preventable / unwarranted conflict * Review of the dynamic triangle * Review of the day, personal learning and action planning

This workshop will help you create, develop and close business opportunities using a consultative approach and a value-based (not price-led) proposition. Value-based selling means working the way your customer wants to buy, not how you want to sell. It also means: In a transactional sale the customer knows the answer without help from a salesperson (or cannot see why they should choose you), or is prepared to stay with what they have. Customer decision criteria are price and convenience and customers resent time spent with (new) salespeople, mainly because the salesperson adds little or nothing to what the customer already has and just wastes time. In a consultative or value-based sale, by contrast, the customer doesn't know the answer already. The salesperson must take the role of an advisor, not just a 'product promoter'. Customers demand expertise, advice and customisation during the sales process. Often customers insist on multiple meetings with salespeople and others to develop advantages that you can bring and reduce the perceived risk of changing. In this way the salesperson often adds more value than the product or service alone. This very practical workshop will help you use proven strategies and tactics to build, manage and successfully close sustainable business opportunities using a consultative approach and a value-based (not price-led) proposition. This includes: * Increased impact of your new sales conversations, presentations and proposals - leading to faster decisions and increased conversion * Greater confidence, consistency and professionalism throughout the business development process * Enhanced sales questioning skills and techniques, leading to better, faster and more accurate development of customer needs, problems, value and expectations * Improve your people, communication, influence and persuasion skills when approaching, consulting or presenting your services and solutions * How to build value at all points in the customer's buying process through your knowledge, skills and structured approach * Proven ways to gain additional business and referrals from existing customers and contacts, through direct approach and lead generation * Being better able differentiate your firm, your solutions, track-record and expertise clearly and accurately with tailored value statements for each stage and for each opportunity * Overcome and avoid price-based objections, buying criteria and negotiation 1 INTRODUCTION AND KEY PRINCIPLES OF VALUE-BASED SELLING * Introduction and review of pre-course questionnaires - KPIs, personal learning objectives and key principles * The main principles of value-based selling and how they benefit you and the customer * How value-based selling differs from 'transactional' or 'price-based' selling * The stages of the customer's buying cycle - how to identify and work through strategies for each stage * The concept of structured and set-piece selling and proposing * Presentation by participants: Personal sales improvement goals 2 VALUE-BASED SELLING STRATEGIES AND SKILLS * What is value? How can one move away from a price-led agenda? * How to survive and resist price pressure - six techniques * A review of key competencies and skills needed for a value-based approach * Strategies, case studies and examples with discussion and review * Defining your initial value proposition and comparative advantage * How best to established the right level of trust, rapport and credibility * Planning and practice session: Strategy - mapping a value-based sales process. 3 CONNECTING SKILLS * Research before the meeting and the first few minutes - ways to gain instant rapport and setting the foundation for a successful outcome in a first sales call * How to structure an effective first time sales call or meeting - the subtle differences that are important to master * How best to differentiate your solutions and build credibility and enthusiasm early or at the start of the buying process * Overcoming initial buying resistance and relaxing the prospect; gaining rapport, opening the meeting: PBC (purpose-benefit-check) and gaining agreement to proceed * Planning and practice session: Connecting - first meeting with a new contact 4 CONSULTING - BUILDING, DEVELOPING AND INFLUENCING CLIENT NEEDS * Understanding the power of high-impact and third-level questions to influence people based around specific needs and solutions * The importance of body language and other personal communication dynamics when asking questions; empathic listening, run-on questions, drawing out skills, summarising, etc * Creating a 'disturb' approach to creating needs and opportunities and positioning your solutions * Using proven advanced sales questioning techniques with greater skill: Outcome, SPIN and qualification questions * 'Decision-making criteria' - tools to help you develop the relevant criteria with the customer and in doing so progress your sales opportunities more effectively * Planning and practice session: Questioning skills 5 CONVINCING - PRESENTATION AND PERSUADING SKILLS PRACTICE * Substance and style - selecting the right tone and content to engage and enthuse your prospect * Compelling benefits and reducing perceived risk - key messages to deliver * Helping the customer choose your proposition - by being convincing, compelling and credible when you present * Professional and effective presentation skills - with personal coaching and practice sessions * The keys of influence and persuasion and the keys to convincing a new customer to choose you for the first time * Planning and practice session: Role-play in presenting your solution 6 COMMITMENT * Knowing when and how to close for commitment to the next stage in your sales process, plus ways to ask for commitment professionally and effectively * How to isolate, prioritise and answer objections and concerns more openly and accurately, using a consultative not a confrontational approach * Deal more effectively and profitably with price objections and reduce buyer's remorse (which can lead to an 'I want to think about it' reaction and cause delay and inertia) * Key negotiation skills around the closing process - getting to 'yes' * Planning and practice session: Role-play in closing and negotiation skills 7 ASSESSED ROLE-PLAY - FINAL PRACTICE SESSION Live role-plays * There is an option for external participants to be brought in to the live training workshop to take-part in the final assessed role-play or assist with other sessions run during the course. Performance assessment - 'Dragon's Pitch' * The final afternoon of the course is an assessed role-play using a prepared scenario and external 'CEO'. The assessment criteria will be agreed prior to the workshop. 8 WORKSHOP SUMMARY AND CLOSE * Personal action plan and learning summary

The IOSH Managing Safelyaward is valid for three years. Award-holders need to undertake this one-day refresher programme every three years in order to maintain their status. This very interactive, practical programme covers: An interactive case study exercise is used throughout the day to apply refreshed knowledge to the plan-do-check-act model and then link it back to the workplace. For example, participants examine the elements of a safety and health policy, come up with ideas to influence safety culture, and select the best communication methods to engage a workforce.

The need for key staff to have commercial skills is paramount, as the public sector is increasingly opened up as a commercial market, in which organisations compete against each other and the private sector for contracts. Generating additional income and being commercially aware is vital for this to be a success, and is what many public sector organisations are looking to do. This programme will help you: * See commercial awareness as not just another skill-set, but as a different mind-set * Use a variety of tried-and-tested commercial, analytical decision-making techniques and tools * Define your commercial objectives * Develop a strategic focus * Start looking at service clients as market segments * Analyse, in a competitive context, your service offering * Plan a commercial strategy, prepare for its implementation and see it through to execution 1 WHAT IS COMMERCIAL THINKING? * Understand what it means to be a commercial thinker * Identifying commercial opportunities often involves not only a different skill set but also a different mindset; looking at the services that you provide 2 DEFINING STRATEGIC COMMERCIAL OBJECTIVES * Defining your key commercial objectives * Prioritising your strategic objectives * Two key strategic planning tools: * Resource and Competency Matrix * PESTLE * How to apply these tools to your particular situation 3 DEVELOPING A STRATEGIC FOCUS * Decision-making on how to compete in the markets identified by your strategic objectives requires a strategic focus * Developing strategic focus * A tool for helping you to make those decisions: using the Ansoff Matrix 4 DEFINING CUSTOMER TARGETS * How to think more commercially by understanding who all your customers are and how they differ from each other * how to apply the principles to your areas to identify the type of customers you have and their key characteristics - Customer segmentation * Who are your customers? How do their needs vary? - Scenarios 5 THE COMPETITIVE MARKET PLACE * Understanding the competitive forces at play * Different types of competition * Analysing your competitive environment using Porter's 5 Forces model 6 MEETING STAKEHOLDER EXPECTATIONS * Two simple models to help you identify the key stakeholders who could influence your commercial environment * How to use your stakeholders to help you achieve your commercial objectives 7 IMPLEMENTATION - SYSTEMS, STRUCTURES AND PROCESSES * Effective commercial activity involves working with others to implement ideas and strategies * What do you need to have in place before you implement your commercial strategy? * How to health-check your organisation prior to implementation using the McKinsey 7S framework 8 IMPLEMENTATION - PEOPLE AND CULTURE * A good commercial strategy only works if the people involved buy in to the ideas and if the culture of the organisation is conducive to the effective implementation * How the latest thinking in behavioural economics can help you develop your culture and people to work commercially 9 TOOLS AND CHECKLISTS * Be more commercial within your sphere of influence using a commercial checklist to help you * Using the checklist as a benchmark against the most commercially aware organisations * Using the checklist as a health check - both corporately and individually

If you are a Mental Health First Aider or MHFA Champion you have skills for life that support you and the people around you. We believe that mental health should be treated equally to physical health - and just like physical first aid, Mental Health First Aid training should be kept up to date. The four-hour MHFA Refresher course will empower you to: * Keep your awareness of mental health supports current * Update your knowledge of mental health and what influences it * Practice applying the Mental Health First Aid action plan OUTLINE * About mental health * Stress and factors that influence mental health * Mental health continuum and stigma * Frame of reference and non-judgement * Reintroducing ALGEE * Warning signs of mental ill-health * Depression and anxiety * Suicide and first aid for suicidal crisis * Psychosis and first aid for severe psychotic episodes * Practising our MHFA sills * Self-care, wellbeing and recovery

Learners develop an essential understanding of caring for people with dementia, and covers the benefits of positive communication, use of medication, and importance of highly individualised, person-centred care

Effective communication is a skill. This half-day workshop is very interactive - participants can practise their communication skills in a positive, supportive environment. 1 WELCOME, INTRODUCTIONS AND OBJECTIVES * The definition of effective communication * Exercise: sending a message 2 VERBAL COMMUNICATIONS * Effective communicators - who are they? What skills or attributes do they have? * Listening skills, clear use of words, presence, eye contact, body language 3 HOW GOOD A LISTENER ARE YOU? * Exercise: listening skills questionnaire and evaluation 4 IMPACT VERSUS INTENT - WHAT DID YOU REALLY MEAN TO SAY? * Attitudes influence behaviour and behaviour breeds behaviour * Exercise: 'I never said she stole money' * The need to avoid misunderstanding or misinterpretation 5 THE 5 KEY PRINCIPLES TO EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION * Exercise: 'What would you say?' 6 WRITTEN COMMUNICATION * What makes an effective written communication? * Kipling's 6 Honest Men: who, what, where, when, why and how * Planning to write an email 7 FUZZY MEANINGS * Probabilities for misunderstandings and misinterpretations 8 PRACTICAL EXERCISE * Hone written communication skills and put into practice hints and tips from the session 9 REVIEW OF KEY LEARNING POINTS AND OBJECTIVES

This is an essential programme for any member of staff whose role requires a high level of attention to detail. The focus is specifically on the handling of text and data, whether at the input stage or when collating information into reports and documents for use by others. The session looks at both prevention and cure. For 'prevention', it focuses on understanding how common errors occur and on developing an awareness of the factors which influence our level of attentiveness. It introduces key psychological theories around attentiveness including the 'capacity' and 'bottleneck filter' models. And it looks at how working styles can affect attention to detail. For 'cure', the programme looks at how to minimise the effect of stress on concentration as well as introducing a number of tools and techniques for promoting accuracy - at both the input and the checking stages. Particular attention is paid to proof-reading techniques. By the end of the session, participants will: * Appreciate why errors occur * Understand how stress and other factors can affect focus and accuracy * Know how to improve accuracy and reduce errors when handling text and data * Be able to proof-read text and number-based documents more accurately 1 THE IMPORTANCE OF ACCURACY * The impact of mistakes * Why accuracy is so important * Main reasons why errors occur 2 ATTENTIVENESS THEORY * The 'capacity' and 'bottleneck filter' models * Selective attention * Chunking - big picture / little picture 3 PREPARING FOR ACCURACY * Working styles - how they affect detail-orientation * Identifying and minimising the impact of stress on concentration 4 PRACTICAL STRATEGIES * How to improve accuracy and reduce errors when inputting text * Managing interruptions and distractions * Proofing text and numbers